


Not According to Plan

by Mireille



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: joss100, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-08
Updated: 2007-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-17 09:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13655982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: They might have been in the same country now, but he didn't think they'd ever been farther away.





	Not According to Plan

England hadn't ever seemed that far.   
  
They'd been--Xander didn't even know what to call it; when he'd tried talking to Willow about it,  _she'd_  called it "flirting." He wasn't sure, but she might have a point.  
  
Whatever it was, they'd been doing it more and more lately. And Giles had never seemed to be that far from him; he was the voice just at the other end of the phone line, the familiar handwriting on the envelope when Xander picked up his mail. In another country, maybe, but still right there.   
  
Then he'd gotten off the plane, and Giles was waiting at baggage claim: clearing his throat and awkwardly offering him a handshake and asking him how his trip went, and it was nothing,  _nothing_  like what Xander had been expecting.   
  
They might have been in the same country now, but he didn't think they'd ever been farther away.   
  


***

  
  
  
  
Things didn't really get any less awkward once they were back at Giles' place and Xander's bags were stashed in the spare bedroom. This wasn't even Giles the librarian; this was Giles, the total stranger. Giles, the guy who seemed determined to keep Xander at a distance.   
  
They got through one terribly uncomfortable dinner before Xander decided to check into a hotel, after all. The whole time Xander was telling Giles his carefully thought-out lie about not being used to sharing space with anyone else these days, he got the feeling Giles wanted to say something, but he never did.   
  
He did help Xander carry his stuff out to the taxi, though.   
  
Xander figured he'd call the Council's travel agent in the morning, find out if he could move up that flight to Rome to visit Buffy and Dawn.   
  
After all, there wasn't much reason for him to stay here.   
  


***

  
  
  
  
Xander had reached under his pillow, hand clutching the stake, before he was even fully awake. He'd learned in the past couple of years that while a stake was harder to kill other things than vampires with, it did slow them down enough to buy him time to grab a better weapon.   
  
Then he realized that the sound he'd heard had been a knock on the door, and his heart stopped pounding. "Just a minute," he called, pulling on a pair of pants and stumbling to the door. He looked out through the peephole, the distorted view it provided still instantly recognizable.   
  
"Xander? I wanted to talk to you about what happened tonight," Giles said, and Xander thought a vampire would have been less terrifying.   
  


***

  
  
  
  
"I would think," Giles said, as Xander turned to the window to enjoy the view of a poorly-lit parking lot, "you'd at least want to know the truth."   
  
Xander shrugged. "The truth usually sucks."   
  
"The thing is," Giles went on, just like Xander had agreed with him, "I don't quite know what happened. For some reason, I second guessed myself back at the airport, and then... things just never quite slid back into place."   
  
"Second guessed? How?" He ignored the faint stirrings of hope, telling himself to just listen.   
  
"That wasn't what I had meant to do when I first saw you. Not at all."   
  
He could ask, and he was sure Giles would answer, and then Xander could tell Giles to go home, because Xander was leaving for Rome as soon as he could get a flight.   
  
Instead, he turned around. "You only get one do-over," he warned Giles.   
  


***

  
  
  
  
Xander didn't know what he'd do if he was wrong.   
  
It didn't matter, because he'd been right, and Giles' arms were around him, bridging all the distance that had grown up between them in the past day. For a moment, all Xander could do was hug back, grinning more than he thought he had in years.   
  
He'd hugged Giles before, but this was different. This was having his face buried in the crook of Giles' neck, his mouth pressed against the skin--not kissing, but with a definite feeling of "not yet" attached; this was Giles' hands at the small of his back, holding Xander close to him.   
  
This was what Xander had felt, listening to Giles' voice at the other end of the phone call.   
  
This was  _home_ , Xander thought, and maybe there was a lot more here for him than he'd thought just a couple of hours ago. 

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


End file.
